Bloomberg is going to close the main branch of the New York Public Library as well as several Brooklyn branches - selling off the real estate to luxury developers.

We already lost the Donnell branch on 53rd - a fine branch with lots of space and public ampitheater Bloomberg shut down to sell to be made into a luxury hotel - the hotel bailed but the library is gone forever, now the space sits empty.

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how racism works in NY ew York - real structural racism, not just prejudice

As you may have read — or seen mocked on “The Daily Show” — Katz is the conservative Republican state lawmaker who managed to get himself busted for marijuana possession last month.
According to the official account of the state police, a trooper clocked the pol doing 80 m.p.h. up the Thruway, pulled him over, smelled pot and “found Katz in possession of a small bag of marijuana.”
Keep in mind, this happened around 10 a.m. on a weekday. Katz was en route to Albany for a day of committee meetings and floor votes — a situation that gave rise to endless “wake, bake and legislate” jokes around the Capitol.
Politically, it was a major embarrassment, especially since Katz has voted against letting sick people use marijuana for pain relief — even with a doctor’s permission.
Legally, though, the bust turned out to be no big deal. The trooper chose not to run a sobriety test or charge Katz with driving under the influence. Instead, he wrote him up for speeding and unlawful possession of marijuana — a violation that’s equivalent to a traffic ticket — and sent him on his way to write the laws of New York State.
In court last week, the speeding ticket was reduced to a parking violation and the marijuana charge was “adjourned in contemplation of dismissal,” or “ACD” — meaning it goes away completely if he keeps his nose clean for six months.
So long as he pays a $75 fine and does 20 hours of community service, Katz gets to walk away free and clear — with no permanent criminal record.
In short, the justice system treated Katz’s possession of a small amount of marijuana as the trivial matter that it was — which is exactly what the Legislature intended when it decriminalized the offense back in 1977.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of New Yorkers arrested for pot possession — tens of thousands of people per year, mostly young black and Latino men in New York City — don’t receive the lenient treatment that Katz got.
Take Andre Warren of the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, for example. Two years ago, Warren and a friend were arrested on minor marijuana charges after being stopped and frisked coming out of a restaurant. Warren says police officers found a small bag of pot in his friend’s boot, then arrested both of them. They were cuffed, driven to the precinct, fingerprinted, photographed and held overnight in lockup before being let go the next day.
“I don’t even smoke marijuana,” Warren told me. “Basically, they locked me up for nothing.”
Determined to prove his innocence, Warren says he took time off work to fight the charges in court for several months — then, finally, agreed to pay a fine and accept an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal. He ultimately wound up with the same outcome as Katz — only with the unwelcome addition of handcuffs, fingerprints, a mug shot, a night in jail and an arrest record.
Much the same scenario plays out dozens of times a day in the streets of New York City — where the NYPD racked up almost 40,000 pot arrests in 2012 alone.
Commissioner Ray Kelly has ordered cops to stop arresting people for public possession, which is a misdemeanor, when they find the pot hidden in a pocket or shoe during a search.

Yeah all those claims listed there is all petty change compared to the damage done to my car and the damages just keep getting worse. But hopefully the insurance goes hard at the city for these damages. I'd hate to see them get off easy with something like this....I'm still fucking shocked so many fucking things happened over that fucking pothole.

Yeah all those claims listed there is all petty change compared to the damage done to my car and the damages just keep getting worse. But hopefully the insurance goes hard at the city for these damages. I'd hate to see them get off easy with something like this....I'm still fucking shocked so many fucking things happened over that fucking pothole.

out of curiosity, since the car is owned by the leasing company, what's their take on this? i'm asking cuz i'm curious about leasing contracts.

US continues to torture innocent prisoners at its concentration camp in occupied cuba

Shaker Aamer, 44, is the only Briton being held at Guantanamo Bay. He has been detained without charge for more than 11 years and on hunger strike since mid-February – one of more than 100 prisoners taking part in a protest which has brought the camp close to meltdown. America has twice cleared him for release, but insists he can leave only if he goes to Saudi Arabia – where he would face further imprisonment and be separated from his British wife Zin and five children. Here, in two letters written from his cell to The Mail on Sunday, he describes his ordeal.

I began my hunger strike on February 12, 2013. There was a time when I worried about a whole lot of medical problems that were causing me suffering: the knee that has caused me pain since I was beaten up early in my detention; my back which gets re-injured each time the FCE Team [the Forcible Cell Extraction team, formerly known as the Emergency Reaction Force] comes in and beats me up some more; the kidney trouble that is made worse by the yellow water that comes through the taps round here; the swelling in my ankles caused by wearing shackles every day.
But since I started the hunger strike, my concerns about all this have pretty much been overridden by the endless desire for food.
My treatment was bad before, but since the beginning of April I have been treated with particular venom.
They started by taking my medical things. I had an extra blanket to lessen my rheumatism, but that was soon gone. My backbrace went at the same time. The pressure socks I had to keep the build-up of water down did not last long.
Then they came for my toothbrush. Next, my sheet was taken, along with my shoes. My legal documents vanished soon after, leaving me only my kids’ drawings on the wall. They were the last to go.
And now I am left alone. Since 8am Monday, April 15, I have had nothing, not even my flip-flops.
I am meant to sleep on concrete, and when I say alone, I mean alone in a very lonely world. The bean hole is what they call the small hatch on the door through which they normally pass my food.

Davis’ home was raided by a 27 man SWAT team in a Blackhawk helicopter. She said they spent more time and utilized more man power raiding her home without a warrant than the government used to raid the alleged compound of Osama bin Laden
As her lawsuit progressed, she says she obtained documentation of why DHS said she was a domestic terrorist. According to the documentation, DHS labeled David a domestic terrorist “for derogatory statements made in her filings and in her articles about the Department of Homeland Security.”

Looking at the reporting from OK I saw this: "KFOR live stream viewers: KFOR is now complying with the FCC-mandated requirement to caption IP-based internet video streams. This requirement, with a compliance deadline of March 30, 2013, means that we must caption all live video programming."

what right does the FCC have to force this on the internet?

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